Pages

Monday, June 26, 2017

Emmanuel Macron’s democratic revolution

"A philosophy graduate, Mr Macron has thought hard about the nature of presidential office. As a former adviser to François Hollande, his hapless Socialist predecessor, he also watched at close quarters how to get it wrong. What is missing in France, Mr Macron told Le 1, a newspaper, in a rather astonishing interview in 2015, 'is the figure of the king, whose death I fundamentally believe the French people did not want.' The empty feeling at the centre of French democracy, he argued, was only occasionally filled by great leaders, such as Charles de Gaulle. 'After him', said Mr Macron, 'the normalisation of the presidential figure has reinstalled an empty chair in the heart of political life.'"